


Into the Void

by Death_Valley_Girl



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dystopia, F/M, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-07 18:03:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7724407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Death_Valley_Girl/pseuds/Death_Valley_Girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One year after the defeat of the Republic, the First Order is moving swiftly to establish its dominance across the galaxy. </p><p>But Kylo Ren, fully committed to the dark, is confronted with a disconcerting apathy and the vague sense that something is unfinished, all the while haunted by a force signature that refuses to let him go.</p><p>Lari, a weapon made during the rise of the First Order, uses her power for good by helping the wounded, the sick, and the orphaned in a secret haven for refugees on Endor. Despite her history of doing good, she remains fearful of what she doesn't know about herself and her power.</p><p>When Supreme Leader Snoke has plans for the galaxy that go beyond empire, Kylo Ren and Lari's fates intersect, for better or worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

Of course she’d recognized him immediately.

Back on Felucia, before she knew what she was, he was the first human she had seen in years, along with the kind old man Skywalker. She’d assumed she was nothing more than another face in his eyes. Another face in the crowds of people he’d likely murdered. One look at his aircraft and clothing and she knew he no longer was a practicing Jedi. Indeed, he looked like someone of value in the First Order's New empire.

But the ship had crashed right by her shack in the forest, one of the many cobbled together out of war wreckage on Endor since the end of the war. Endor was the unofficial and very-much secret haven for wounded soldiers and civilians, orphaned humans and creatures.

With all the healing Lari did on a daily basis to ease pain and suffering, it seemed contradictory to refuse treatment to this strange man who was bleeding all over her floor.

More importantly, it meant getting information from him. If the First Order was on their way to take over Endor, they had to prepare.

The thought of a First Order invasion made her want to empty her stomach.

“What are you doing to me.”

He was coming to. Lari was busy undoing the man’s collar. His clothes were ridiculously constrictive. She just needed a sliver of his skin near the heart.

“I am healing you.”

The man spit blood from his mouth onto the floor. “You witch.”

She was sure he meant it to sound hostile, but it came out strangled and betrayed the pain he was in.

“I’m no witch,” she vowed. “It’s for your own good.”

The man growled, and that did scare her. The muscles of his neck worked, his fists clenched at his sides. She remembered how she thought of him the first time they met. Like a storm - magnetic, capable of death.

Nuni always had to call her back inside the hut when a storm was approaching. Lari wanted to watch the dark clouds swirl like a vicious dance, to feel the electric current in the air, the hairs on her arms stand on end. The plants and animals dutifully took cover - always. But Lari - though attuned to the movements on Felucia - resisted settling into its rhythms. She supposed she never was meant to stay on that planet forever. 

The man bleeding on her floor growled again, and lifted his hand in an attempt to choke her with the force.

With her mind Lari swatted the weak force trick away.

“You’re hurt and it would do no good to have you try to kill me now,” she said simply.

She laid one hand on the ground and another on his chest that was heaving and closed her eyes. She felt the soil: firm but pliable, nutrient and dense, full of living things and traces of the dead. She felt his heart: strong but overexerted, capable but beginning to weaken.

She breathed in, asking the life forces beneath her palms. The soil knew what she was asking of it. In a moment she felt a course of energy surge through her. She was suddenly too full of everything: power, feeling, life. She felt the heart struggling under her palm slow to a steady beat. When she felt its rhythm was strong enough, she sighed and silently thanked the life forces. The energy eased slowly back into the ground.

Perhaps because she was so connected to his lifeforce at this moment, Lari felt the memory of when she'd first met him vividly.

A bearded man and him--then a young boy with dark hair--had showed up at her and Nuni's hut on Felucia.

Or rather, the dark-haired boy was being eaten by a carnivorous plot-trap, and the bearded man was coaching him on releasing his anger, for the flower was reacting to just that.

Lari, who had been tending their garden, ran over and put a hand on the flower, hushing it to a calm. Almost instantaneously the flower released its spittle-hold.

Lari thought it was strange that they had come to see her and Nuni, but the Skywalker man had requested to speak with Nuni and private, leaving the two adolescents outside the hut with the sounds of the jungle.

Covered in plant spittle, the boy had looked certifiably irritated and uncomfortable, while Lari had been too curious to be awkward.

He was tall and handsome, that much was obvious. But she was more interested in the flux of emotions he cycled through. It was like facing a storm. And something sinister lurked under the surface that was not quite his. She wondered if the kindly man with Nuni had any idea.

She felt in her bones that the boy was not the root of the darkness.

As if being forced to, the boy addressed her.

“You are a force user.”

Lari blinked. “A what?”

The boy’s eyes narrowed, perhaps not used to explaining these things. “You feel the force.”

“I feel Felucia,” she said uncertainly. She laid her hand on a tree, feeling its familiar life stream. The comfort it gave her didn’t assuage her restlessness, a restlessness from this visit from two humans.

The boy had an intense look about him that made him seem much older than her.

“Your caretaker has been lying to you.”

Lari frowned.

She opened her senses to the voices in the hut.

_“—can’t keep her here forever without telling her what she is capable of.”_

Lari swallowed.

She knew the boy was right.

She had known all along, her whole life.

Lari had grown up on Felucia under her caretaker, Nuni. She had loved Nuni, but Nuni expected her to live a simple life on Felucia and not ask questions about her ability to listen to plants and animals, to spark lightning from her fingers, to make the land quake whenever she cried, to know the feelings of any creature just by looking at them.

Nuni had given her books to read, thinking that would sate her desire to see the galaxy, to know who her parents were (Nuni would tell her her parents hadn’t wanted her, but Lari refused to believe it).

Nuni had forced her to believe that living a simple life was all that they, as creatures of the universe, could ask for.

“Is there food on the table? Is there a roof over your head? Then be grateful and happy,” she’d say, kneading dough with her small, pudgy hands.

Lari loved Nuni. And if Lari had been honest with herself, she was afraid of finding out what it was Nuni hid from her. Why they lived alone, settling on the abandoned planet, when all the books she read spoke about cities and wars. 

But she wouldn't admit it to a stranger.

“Nuni loves me,” was all she could say.

The boy let out a laugh, short and bitter. Then, “She’s afraid of you.”

“You don’t know her,” she said, defensive. She gave him a critical look. “You don’t understand love. You’re a very confused boy.”

That seemed to anger him. The storm that had been churning before her emerged full-blown and dark.

“You are a simpleton. All the books you’ve read and you don’t even know what the force is. Or do all humans communicate with their planets?”

His words hit her low in the gut and made her throat knot.

If there was one thing that agitated Lari, it was feeling ignorant. It was the condition of her life, and now this self-righteous boy was pointing it out to her with a self-satisfaction that grated.

The sky darkened and a wind began to stir the world around them. She vaguely felt the boy’s eyes on her.

She refused to cry in front of someone who seemingly took joy in other’s sorrow.

The door to the hut opened and the kind man stepped out. Nuni lingered in the doorway. The man paused before the boy and spoke gently.

“We will return to the academy.” He turned to her, hand outstretched. “Lari. I hope we see each other soon.”

She paused at such a statement, but she knew it wasn’t an accident. Somewhere she knew the truth, that their visit was not happenstance. That they were looking for something, and her and Nuni were somehow involved.

The kind man Skywalker had returned the next week, this time alone, to retrieve Lari for the academy. This time, Nuni didn’t put up a fight. Instead she’d told Lari she’d seen it in a vision.

It was on Hosnian Prime, en route to the academy, that Skywalker had gotten word that something had happened at his academy. Rather than bring her along as promised, he told her to wait on Hosnian Prime.

“Someone will come for you,” he’d promised.

But Lari, so used to hearing Nuni’s white lies, knew no one would be coming for her.

  

***

 

When she opened her eyes, the man was half sitting up, propped up on his elbows, looking at her with narrow eyes. She withdrew her hand from his chest warily.

Despite the steady heartbeat she had felt under her palm, his breaths were ragged and agitated. His eyes kept hers in a deadly gaze. She noticed they were almost completely black and found she couldn’t look away.

He gritted out the words between his teeth. “Where is my saber.”

A little breathless, Lari asked, “You want to kill me already?”

“I could kill you now.”

“But you refrain.”

Slowly, so slowly, he drew his legs in and stood to his full height so that he was looming over her. Lari resisted the urge to meet him standing. Despite the death he seemed to exude, she could tell that it was taking some considerable effort for him to do that simple act.

She looked up at him. “You are the Jedi Killer.”

He said nothing. She could feel him disturbing the force around them to find his saber. It would take more than that. She was gifted at shields, and right now his saber was in a force shield, deliberately hidden from him.

She grew uneasy, not because she was afraid of him hurting her, but because she had no idea what to expect from him. A storm’s course and severity could be unpredictable depending on the landscape and pressure around them. Finally she stood, keeping the distance between him. He looked immense in her tiny cottage. This man, a leader of the First Order and murderer of thousands, was trapped inside her tin shack.

“Give it to me.”

He spoke as if he were trying to persuade her with the force. But he didn’t use it. She figured he knew better.

She cocked her head. “Why should I?”

He looked at her from under his heavy, dark brow, looking terrible, looking frighteningly beautiful.

It was then that Lari realized she was playing with fire.

He spoke in a low, rough voice low that sounded like continental plates groaning against each other. “Because your life is mine.”

Lari, refusing to be frightened, lifted her chin. “And yours mine.”

He took a step towards her. At his full height he was overwhelming. Lari felt a swell of fear in her chest. But then, almost imperceptibly, the man began to sway.

Out of instinct she moved forward to steady him. There was a chair behind him and she guided him to it.

If he exuded death before, murder was in his eyes now as he glared at her. Lari refused to acknowledge the ungrateful look and stepped back from him.

“You have lost a lot of blood, too much to be threatening someone’s life without breaking a promise. I suggest you rest before resuming your bloodbath.”

As she turned away she felt her wrist imprisoned in a grip. The grip twisted her back to face him. A dark shadow had passed over his features. He was gritting his teeth, making him look downright feral. She thought of the wild dogs she’d seen when first arriving to Hosnian Prime, how they’d bar their teeth if cornered in an alleyway- ready to strike, not ready to die.

“Your hospitality is amusing,” he began, his tone balancing deadly lilt. He tightened his grip on her wrist, so hard that she had to stop herself from crying out. “I don’t want it.”

She couldn’t help but swallow.

“What do you want?”

Lari knew he wanted his saber. What burned beneath the words was the real question. Why are you doing what you are doing in this life of yours?

Something changed in his features. A recognition.

“You’re the girl from Felucia.”

Lari said nothing. The man moved his head slightly, his lips twitching. Not a smile, but something close to one. But more wicked.

“You’re the weapon the First Order’s been hunting.”

Lari wrenched her hand out of his malevolent grasp. She’d hated that word ever since that kind man, Skywalker, had explained to her that’s what she’d been engineered to be. A weapon. As if she didn’t have a beating heart. He’d pleaded with her to come to the Jedi Academy. _You cannot remain in hiding forever._ That was a fact she knew, a fact Nuni had denied until the end.

“You aren’t the type of weapon I imagined the First Order would covet,” he said.

“Because I’m not,” she said, heated. She looked away and brushed her hands on her pants. “I am not a killer. Otherwise you’d be dead.”

She turned and walked toward the window, away from the man. The Jedi Killer.

She ignored his eyes on her. She was suddenly very tired. She didn’t want to talk with this murderer anymore.

“You are not taking me, if that’s what you are thinking,” she said. “You wouldn’t be the first to try. Or fail.”

The man scoffed. “I’m not wasting my time with First Order errands.”

His words were a minor comfort.

Lari hated hiding. She always did, even before she knew that’s what she was doing with Nuni. And here she was, doing it again. Hiding.

Sometimes she didn’t want this, this power. The man before her coveted it as his own, clearly. But Lari realized early on that her power didn’t compute with the world around her. She wanted to heal the sick, care for the wounded, heal planets and species from natural and human-made disasters. She wanted to do good. But of course, she hadn’t been made to do that.

She couldn’t help but shake her head. It didn’t matter what she’d been made to do. No one could tell her what to do her. No one would control her.

No one.

“Give me my saber and I won’t kill you.”

Lari turned around at that. “You wouldn’t kill me regardless.”

“And why is that?” he gritted out, his voice hard like steel.

“You wouldn’t risk dying so easily when I am clearly stronger at this moment.”

Lari moved to the sink and grabbed a glass from her cupboard. She filled the glass with cool water and returned to the Jedi Killer, who was still sitting and slightly slumped.

“Here,” she said, holding the glass in front of him. “I’m sure you haven’t had much to drink in the past twelve hours.”

She held her arm out for a long moment before she realized he was ignoring her offer. With a huff she set the glass on the table and moved to get one for herself. Sitting at the table across from him, she sipped the water, thankful for the distraction.

The man kept his profile to her. It seemed like he didn’t want to look at her as he spoke. “What do you want from me?”

The question surprised Lari.

“I don’t know,” she began, turning the glass between her hands. “I don’t want to kill you, but I don’t know how to let you go without the murder of others my hands.”

The man looked at her peripherally. Not in a fearful way, but in a way Lari couldn’t read. “So you do want to kill me.”

“Want has nothing to do with it,” Lari said. A beat. Then, “I’ve never killed anyone before.”

She couldn’t believe she was confessing to a killer her weaknesses. _No_ , she told herself. _It’s not a weakness to avoid killing. Creatures kill out of fear._

He looked at her as if he had plainly heard her thoughts. Like before something twitched at his lips. A smirk.

“But you were made to kill,” the man said.

Lari caught his eyes. “Unlike you.” She stared at him, hard, afraid to ask. “Have you come to kill us?”

The man scoffed. “I couldn’t care less about the creatures on this foresaken planet.”

Though relieved, Lari frowned. Certainly he’d been heading toward Endor to have crash-landed on it.

“Then why are you here?”

He looked at her like he hated her at that moment.

She heard the sound of glass shattering first. Then he was gone, behind her, and Lari was aware she couldn’t move.

She heard the Jedi Killer’s steps behind her, crunching on the broken glass.

“I’ve had enough games.” The voice came harsh in her ear, and if she could have shivered she would have.

He’d apparently gotten his strength back.

Lari didn’t know how strong the Jedi Killer was. Of course she knew he was strong, very strong. She’d heard the stories. But she figured there was a chance the two of them might be well-matched. She waited as he circled to her front, until black was all she could see. Her eyes strained to meet his.

“Either you die or you give it to me,” he said it like it was the simplest thing in the world.

Are those two choices mutually exclusive? she thought to herself, unable to speak.

His eyes flicked away before fixing on her again.

“No.”

She thought of her options. She was confident she could weaken his hold over her and break free from this paralysis. But once face to face, as supposed equals, was she meant to kill him?

The answer came to her quickly.

She was no god. It wasn’t her place to dole out justice. If she killed him out of self-defense, that was one thing. But he’d made it fairly clear, if his words were to be trusted, that he was not interested in her or the rest of the refugees on this planet.

What happened to the Jedi Killer was his problem. She could only do what she could.

 _Which was what?_ A secret place in her mind asked.

She looked at him in the eyes, affecting a calm.

_Let me go and I will._

He looked at her a long moment. He must have been satisfied with what he saw, for the next moment she was falling forward.

She caught herself on the table. Nervously, with his eyes on her, she closed her eyes and released the force shield from the saber. It was in her bedroom, in a trunk under her bed.

She felt the saber eek out a dark call, like sonar, and felt the man return the call with eager urgency.

In rapid succession she heard her trunk open, the saber of the hilt whizzing in the air, and it hitting a gloved palm.

The Jedi Killer ignited the blade. His face was bathed in a red glow. She felt his newfound confidence thrum in the force.

The purring of the saber was one of the most ominous sounds Lari had ever been subjected to hearing.

He must have sensed her fear, for he smirked. “Are you ready to die?”

“No, I’m not,” she said, her eyes narrowed, his confidence starting to grate her.

She supposed he didn’t care that the First Order had been looking for her on and off for more than ten years. Perhaps his goals weren’t so closely aligned. Or perhaps he thought her capabilities were compromised by her own determination.

She looked from the glowing blade to his face. “Are you?”

“I’m not going to,” he said with what she guessed was bitter humor.

“You will one day,” she vowed. “And you will have no one to say goodbye to.”

If he was caught off guard, he didn’t show it.

“Spare me the ethics.”

The next moment he was raising the saber, about to draw down to her middle.

Thinking wildly, Lari placed her hand in the stream of sunlight coming in from the kitchen window. Drawing on it, she made a shield. The red saber landed hard against the golden shield, spitting angrily.

The Jedi Killer frowned, though murderous intent still flashed in his eyes.

He spoke loudly over the humming energy in the room. “You are a strange weapon.”

He bore his burning blade hard against her shield, working to break it. Being of sunlight the shield was strong, but his physical strength was making up the difference.

Lari closed her eyes. It seemed to be a silly thing to do when engaged in a duel but the results showed as a surge of energy pulsed through her shield and disconnected the saber from it, pushing the Jedi Killer backward.

“You will not kill me,” Lari said levelly like a promise. There was something primal in her now, the will to live that she had seen all around her growing up on Felucia.

“I was made to make the decisions,” the Jedi Killer said, circling her, forcing Lari to turn in circles too. She could feel his pleasure in the force. “You were made to follow orders.”

“Whoever made me did a terrible job, then.”

Using the fingertips of her right hand, she released a spark of lightning aimed at a leg. He was quick to block her attempt and in the same motion moved to strike her side. But she also was quick, too, and again they were locked in a clash.

The Jedi Killer leaned in close, looking like pure evil. “A defective weapon must be destroyed.”

Her eyes narrowed, and something snapped in Lari. All those years of living a lie, of people being afraid of her, of people wanting her for her power. All the emotions intensified and went taut like a cord. She drew it sharply, like a bow for an arrow, and released.

In a moment a flash of light illuminated the room. It blinded Lari. When it dissipated the Jedi Killer was lying on the floor, his saber laying a few feet away.

For a moment she thought she’d killed him. He lay there unmoving, a limp body in black. Lari felt ridiculous when a feeling of guilt haunted her conviction, but she shook it off harshly.

Perhaps he sensed this ridiculous feeling from her, too, for he just barely lifted his head off the ground to look at her.

The force flowed through her. She felt drunk on her own power.

Just before she thought she’d have to decide what to do with him, distant alarms went off.

The town’s alarms to signal a warning.

Lari moved to the window. Several small, black ships like the Jedi Killer’s were headed straight for them.

_The First Order._

They were coming.

The need to hide was so desperate she ached, but not for herself. She thought of her students, many of them orphans, thought of the sick and injured from the war that she treated almost daily. She wanted to hide all of them away, away from the insatiable appetite of the First Order.

She needed to go to them, her people. Not wasting another minute she left the Jedi Killer where he lay, but not before boldly calling his saber to her.

If it was the First Order, she didn’t have time worry about this weakened killer.

And despite how it made sense, she couldn’t kill him.

Not for him, but for herself.

Because deep down, she knew she craved it.

Saber in hand, Lari sprinted out of her tin shack to a well-worn trail toward the commune: a patchwork of shacks strung together from the wreckage of war.

She burned for the fragile lives within them.


	2. Chapter Two

Kylo Ren’s head was pounding.

The girl had been right.

The admission made him clench his jaw.

Her voice, irritatingly calm, rang in his skull as he lay there.

_You’re hurt and it would do no good to have you try and kill me now._

He had struck too soon.

It was the _only_ explanation as to why he was on the floor of some shack on inconsequential Endor, saberless, too weak to stand, let alone stop that—that _girl_ with the force.

He was grateful that his master didn’t hover in his mind like he used to, before the war, before he had complete confidence in Kylo Ren’s darkness. He’d hate to have him in his mind at this very moment.

Just a mere twenty-four hours ago he’d been before the Supreme Leader. Both were being subjected to General Hux’s blathering about new developments of their empire. It appeared to Kylo that much of what Hux did was decide which species were going to be enslaved under what capacity in the new First Order Empire.

The Supreme Leader either approved of Hux’s new power trip or was too pleased with the First Order’s domination to care what Hux did.

Kylo Ren hated hearing about it at all.

Not because he cared who got enslaved or for what purpose. Rather, it irritated Kylo to no end that Hux had so much power in reconfiguring the galaxy.

And it irritated Kylo that Hux felt so much passion when Kylo felt nothing.

Except irritation for Hux.

Having dismissed Hux, the Supreme Leader spoke of this nothingness that lingered inside him.

“Kylo Ren,” his master said in his feline tone. “You are not satisfied with our victory over the galaxy?”

So used to his master knowing his naked mind, Kylo Ren was not ashamed of his apathy.

He was frustrated beyond all measure.

Standing there, dwarfed by the hologram of his master, he craved to feel differently.

Kylo Ren bowed his head. “Not at all, Supreme Leader. I am very satisfied.”

Of course he was. They had terminated the illegitimate Republic, finished that annoyance of the Resistance. He had killed his fool of a father and the general, had helped decimate the city in naive years he had called home.

More than ever he felt confident in his darkness. Kylo Ren had no doubts about where he was meant to be.

But to all of this, he was cold.

Almost—hollow.

“Something remains unfinished in your eyes.”

Kylo looked at his master, who stroked a thin hand at his battered chin.

When he had first come to the Supreme Leader, Kylo was wary and almost frightened of his master’s grotesque appearance. Now he had grown so used to it he thought it worthy to his dark power.

Much like the scar that dissected Kylo Ren’s face.

“What do you sense Kylo Ren?”

Sometimes it happened that his master glimpsed the subconscious of the master of the Knights of Ren before the knight had a chance to vocalize the thought himself.

It was the closest thing to a comfort that Kylo Ren would permit in his life.

“I sense that the one who birthed me is still alive.” Kylo said, his voice flat. “I feel the signature occasionally. It is very faint.”

The Supreme Leader’s eyes scanned him thoughtfully.

“Perhaps it is the General.”

“I don’t see how that is possible, Supreme Leader,” said Kylo, looking to the side agitatedly. “I watched the life die from her eyes.”

His master had leaned back in his throne, looking unconcerned.

“You will find out what is causing this stir in the force and eliminate it.”

Kylo nodded and rose, thinking he was dismissed, but his master held up a hand.

“Kylo Ren,” his master began. He leaned forward, an action Kylo was not used to seeing. There was an enthusiasm. “When you are done with your task, I have a special mission for you. Once you eliminate this…distraction, I believe you will be ready.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.”

Kylo bowed his head, and heard the static of his master fade to nothing. When he looked up again, he was alone.

Walking back to his quarters, Kylo had wondered to himself. He’d never heard of dark users becoming numb. But perhaps he was so dark that he didn’t feel anything at all anymore.

He would never admit it, but the thought almost unnerved him.

 

***

 

Laying there, in that shack, Kylo closed his eyes, letting the strength of the dark wash over him.

He searched the force.

The weapon’s signature was strong. He sensed his saber with her and he couldn’t stop his hands from curling into tight fists.

He searched again.

The force signature he was looking for was faint—but it was there.

And something else. He felt the presence of a few of his knights, approaching the planet.

Had they come for him?

Kylo groaned, both from the strain of sitting up and the knowledge that his knights would see their master weakened on a planet of refugees.

If only that piece of scrap metal from the war hadn’t careened toward his ship during his descent he wouldn’t be in this ridiculous situation.

He’d been distracted, he admitted to himself. He’d been getting more and more obsessed with the force signature that— he was now positive—was on Endor.

It was a careless, idiotic mistake. A younger Kylo Ren would have been furious at himself. But the Kylo Ren of the First Order Empire didn’t doubt his power or strength or darkness.

He was determined.

As much as he hated the thought that his closest knights would see him like this, he couldn’t deny that their help was warranted. They’d eliminate the weapon and return his saber to him while he recovered. Then, he would seek out the force signature for which he’d been hunting, and finish it.

It was the closest to passion that Kylo Ren had felt since the end of the war.

When Kylo had gained enough strength he stepped outside the shack. He watched three ships were descending not far off in a clearing.

Kylo called his helmet to him from the wreckage. When he caught it, he inspected. A small dent, but otherwise in good condition.

He put it on, waiting for his knights.

One by one each descended from their small, sleek pods built for short journeys. All were dressed in black robes with slightly different variation and style. Each had black helmets with voice modulators.

Any outsider looking at the scene might wonder if these men weren’t their own species of malevolence.

Upon approaching, one of the knights, Ander, gestured to the wreckage of Kylo’s ship.

“How the hell did you walk away from that, Ren?”

Kylo Ren would never claim to have friends. But these three men were his closest confidantes.

He was pleased to see them.

“I had some help,” he said, disdain in his voice. “Who sent you?”

“The Supreme Leader,” said Lex, the shortest of the four but the most intense. “He said you’d be needing us.”

“But someone’s already helped you,” said Ridj, gesturing to Kylo, who was in decent condition, albeit weakened.

Kylo tightened the gloves on his hands. “A weapon from the early First Order years, when they were experimenting with liquid crystals in the bloodstream.”

Ander started a little. “They said that experiment was a failure.”

“It was,” said Kylo simply. “She refuses to kill.”

“Supreme Leader has ordered us to kill this weapon,” said Lex, stepping forward. “He said it was urgent that we do so.”

That caught Kylo’s attention. Why hadn’t the Supreme Leader alerted Kylo to the task?

The unspoken question hung in the air. Kylo, too concerned about his mission, brushed it off.

“Fine. Before any killing happens, I need to source the people for information. After that, kill anyone you please.”

“What information is here, Master Ren?” said Ridj.

Kylo tensed, unsure of how to respond.

there was no use telling his knights when he wasn’t sure himself.

“It’s personal.”

“We saw a cluster of shacks as we flew over,” said Ander. “That must be their base.”

Ander looked to the Master of the Knights of Ren, who nodded once.

Kylo Ren drew on his fellow knights’ darkness, gaining back his strength.

He felt ready.

Looking like death, the four knights stalked into the forest, the master in front.

It was quiet on that planet. The sun was lowering now, casting long shadows of the trees onto the forest ground.

Kylo felt the inevitability of his victory bloom darkly in his chest.

 

***

 

When he had killed his mother, it had happened too fast to absorb any of it.

It had to be done quickly. Stormtroopers had positioned detonators all around the Resistance base during the battle on D’Qar.

When he had burst into her room, she was sitting at her makeup counter. It was if no time had passed, as if he was a boy again. As if she had been waiting for him.

She had looked terrified and— infuriating to Kylo— sad.

As if there was any time left to feel anything.

When he put the blade through her heart it was almost by accident.

He bounded to her across the room and lunged toward her. She was already moving for the blaster on her dresser. She shot twice; he deflected. And then his red hot blade was impaling her through the chest.

It was a clumsy move—he regretted it later—and when he de-ignited his saber she fell forward and he caught her arms with his hands, his saber dropping to the carpet, rolling beneath her dresser.

He imagined in another life it would be an embrace.

She had moved her lips. Like a stupid servile son, he had tried to hear her, had moved his head so his ear could catch it, whatever she was saying. He didn’t know what he wanted to hear.

But nothing came.

When he pulled away, her eyes were dull, unfocused— dead.

He felt he had missed an opportunity to solidify something.

With his father, it was different. It had been theatrical, on the catwalk and the two rebel scum looking from above. He’d even felt Snoke’s eyes in his skull, urging him on.

When it happened, it went according to plan. He’d executed it perfectly.

But he hadn’t felt darker. It wasn’t until the Supreme Leader had him conduct his training that Kylo felt the dark welcome him fully.

He killed. And killed. Hundreds, thousands. He grew numb, so completely numb to the faces writhing in pain, to the life forces he felt dissipate in his presence.

He’d never minded ordering the death of a village. He’d help the slaughter of the Jedi Academy. But never before had he killed so many, so endlessly, so methodically.

It was inevitable, their death. They would all be killed by him.

And that’s when the Supreme Leader knew that Kylo Ren’s training was complete.

 

***

 

Kylo stopped. He felt it before Ridj spoke.

“We are being watched.”

Creatures in the trees, beyond the ridge.

 _Ewoks_.

Blasts came from all directions.

His knights blocked with their sabers. Kylo used the force to halt the blasts, reversing their direction to blast the culprits.

The four of them were being assaulted with red blasts. There were probably hundreds of Ewoks, firing on them. Despite its rare use in dark side, his knight Ander attempted a dark force shield. But the sheer number of blasts was weakening it. Saberless, Kylo focused on choking two at a time with his gloved hands.

If they hadn’t been caught unaware, it would be no issue slaughtering the beasts. But somehow they had been completely ambushed, and Kylo Ren thought it had something to do with that weapon and her affinity for force shields.

The thought made Kylo Ren furious.

He emitted a force blast that knocked back all the hundreds of filthy creatures.

But it didn’t stop one swinging on a rope headed toward his head.

He ducked just in time.

Using his force blast to their advantage, his knights split to conquer. Kylo used the force to rip the Ewok from the rope. He began force choking the thing, his anger at this ridiculous distraction of an Ewok ambush into that ball of fur. It hovered and squirmed in the air like a puppet.

He felt the heat of his saber on the back of his neck before he felt her.

Another force shield.

“Let her go.”

Kylo Ren wanted to laugh. He also wanted to destroy everything in sight.

He waited a moment. Then, he dropped the Ewok and turned around slowly to face her.

He felt a pathetic feeling coursing through her, something like fear.

It made him sick to feel it.

He had grown so strong at blocking out cries of pain, feelings of helplessness, but this girl projected her feelings so strongly, stronger than any normal human or creature, that he couldn’t tune it out.

It was as if she was strengthened by them.

Once facing her he spoke, his helmet modulating his words and hiding his every expression.

“So eager to kill me now.”

She held the saber, _his_ saber, raised and steadfast. “Because you threaten our lives. You are a liar.”

He didn’t care about any of this. But he saw her mind. He didn’t know if he was looking or she was showing. It was him in her shack, saying he couldn’t care less about any of them.

“I didn’t lie,” he said simply. “I don’t care about any of you, living or dead.”

For a moment he wanted to add how ridiculous it was that _she_ was angry with _him_ when they were the ones ambushed. But he caught himself.

He didn’t owe the girl an explanation, about why his knights were here, about why he was here.

But then he detected it.

It was as if the wind changed minutely, and the scent of the force signature drifted over.

The General.

A secret place spoke the name he'd once called her in a different life.

But the girl was swinging the red hot blade to his arm, and it burned through the black cloth to his white flesh.

It appeared to be a warning blow.

Her audacity fueled him. He used the force so quickly that the girl didn’t expect it. She flew back into a tree, her head knocking on it with a satisfying _clonk_.

But Kylo wasn’t thinking about that. He was trying to detect where the force signature was coming from.

And it seemed to be coming from her.

She pushed off from the tree and was charging toward him.

But suddenly Lex was there, raising his green blade and drawing it down the length of her back.

The girl cried out, falling to the forest floor on all fours.

Lex walked toward her trembling body and raised his saber facing down, ready to impale.

“Don’t!”

Kylo Ren’s voice boomed through his mask.

“But Master Ren—“

“I said _no_!”

Kylo’s furious breathing was audible through the modulator. The girl was still trembling on all fours. He wondered why she didn’t get up.

Seeing that she wasn’t moving, Kylo called his saber toward him. There was no struggle in retrieving it.

Kylo ignited it and walked toward Lex, whose saber was also lit and hung by his side.

Kylo spoke lowly. “Do you deliberately disobey orders?”

“Supreme Leader wishes to be rid of all the weapons—“

“That can wait,” Kylo gritted out. He took one step closer to Lex, towering over him “You take orders from _me_ , knight.”

“Then you need to be transparent, Master Ren.”

Kylo almost growled, but he controlled himself.

He spoke, dangerously gentle, circling the knight like he had done to the girl in the shack.

“Do you doubt your master, knight?”

“I only know what I’ve been told,” said Lex. “Supreme Leader has declared the weapon a threat to the Empire, and you haven’t disclosed your reason for being here.”

Kylo was aware that the girl was listening.

He breathed deep. He did not intend to be divisive with his knights.

That was how you made yourself the target of a rebellion.

“In time, knight.” said Kylo. “I will tell you when the time comes.”

Lex stood there a moment, silent. Then he nodded once and, seemingly satisfied, de-ignited his saber.

Kylo Ren kept his burning.

He was suddenly aware of how quiet it was.

“Where are the others?” said Kylo.

“They were taken,” Lex began. “There was too many of them.”

The girl began to stand slowly. It brought Kylo back to his purpose.

This _girl_ he couldn’t be rid of.

Who reminded him of Skywalker and the general all at once.

He put the blade to her neck.

For a moment he found himself fascinated by the vulnerable flesh there, covered in dirt and sweat. He watched it move as she swallowed.

“What do you want from me,” she said. Her voice was hard but her eyes were so irritatingly expressive. They were wide, bloodshot, glassy.

He regarded her a moment.

He didn’t want his knights to know that the general might be still alive. That he was haunted by a force signature which called out to him every night. They would think him weak. That he hadn’t executed his plan.

He looked away, searching for the right words.

The weapon was strong in the force. He wouldn’t be able to pry the information from her head easily. And despite her irritating strength, he felt that she wasn’t one to lie.

Rather than make this more painful that it had to be, he settled on a proposal.

“We need to speak in private,” he said.

“And then you will kill me.”

The girl’s face looked wild. Kylo, so used to tuning out expressions and emotions, was struck by how wild she appeared.

Kylo disliked this conversation. He disliked conversation in general. Perhaps that was why he was so good at killing everything so quickly, before anything had a chance to speak.

“My knights have been ordered to kill you,” he said.

“And you leave your friends to be roasted by the Ewoks?” she countered.

The word _friends_ stuck out. It was a word the Knights of Ren, and generally the First Order Empire, didn’t covet.

She was trying to bargain with him.

For a moment Kylo hated that his knights were there. They complicated things. Two of his dark knights had been captured by that ridiculous species.

The Knights of Ren, who had eliminated whole planets, captured by a herd of Ewoks.

His fists clenched and unclenched at the absurdity of it.

He would discipline them later.

The girl spoke, bringing him back to the moment.

“I will speak with you if you promise not to try to kill anyone besides me.”

Kylo Ren almost laughed.

Her face was hardened, intense. She looked like she had in the shack when she’d declared she wasn’t going to be killed by him.

Though the weapon was strong, she was outmatched against his knights.

He half-turned his head toward Lex for input. Lex almost imperceptibly shrugged his shoulders.

Kylo de-ignited his saber.

“Alright,” he said, replacing the saber to his hip. “Ask your Ewoks to release my knights and we won’t kill anyone else besides you.”

Although Kylo hated this whole situation, he’d found a piece of what he’d been searching for.

Somehow this girl was connected to the force signature that haunted him.

So determined to finish what he’d started, Kylo was not about to risk anything.

Killing her could wait.

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter Three

As soon as she heard the Jedi Killer agree to the terms, Lari let down her defenses.

All the lives of the people she’d been shielding during the battle spilled through the force, flooding her senses, momentarily dulling the slicing pain on her back.

It had been taking all her strength to sustain the shield and battle the Jedi Killer.

_Kylo Ren._

His reputation preceded him.

He was the reason she didn’t go to the Academy with Skywalker that day. The reason she’d been deserted on Hosnian Prime.

Whatever was dark in him that day on Felucia had won. She could feel it keenly—that suffocating will to destroy, as if it were on her chest forcing out all the hope and possibility she had ever dreamt of.

It hadn’t been his darkness to begin with, but it was his now.

The Jedi Killer looked at her. Or at least she thought he did. She watched his helmet tilt toward her slightly.

As if on cue, a group of twenty people crested a small ridge overlooking their forest scene. They were dressed in ragged battle clothing, carrying torches and an assortment of home-made and recycled weaponry. They were led by a man with dirty blond hair with a look of pure determination on his face. His eyes apprehended the scene.

Lari felt her heart squeeze.

 _Dash_.

Almost as if he’d heard her, his eyes flicked to her face.

“Lari!”

Without question the knights ignited their sabers beside her.

Dash and his fellow soldiers were halted at the edge of the small ridge. Lari figured the scene must have appeared confusing, her standing with the knights not in combat and clearly in discussion. Her soldiers were looking to Lari, ready to strike but waiting for her to say the word.

Lari felt a swell of pride, then.

_Her people._

She walked past the two knights with their deadly sabers humming to speak to them.

She trusted the Jedi Killer’s word in their agreement. Perhaps it was foolish, but the discussion between the two knights revealed they weren’t here to take over Endor or destroy their camp.

The knights were here not for her people.

They were here for her.

Dash knelt as she approached the small cliff. He looked down at her with such concern that Lari almost felt weak. She wanted to pull his face down and kiss him.

His eyes flicked behind her to the knights, then back to her.

“What’s going on? Are you alright?”

“They’ve promised not to hurt us,” she said. It was a half-truth. But she wasn’t about to tell Dash that the master of the Knights of Ren wanted her for some undisclosable reason and that unimaginable monster Snoke personally wanted her dead.

Dash’s eyes narrowed. “Like hell they won’t.”

Lari lowered her voice. “One of them wants to speak to me…privately.”

She realized it sounded so silly. The knight must have known it sounded ridiculous as well.

Dash certainly did. “A private chat?” he scoffed, and--making quite the act of defiance--he leaned to the side and spit. Lari didn’t see how close it landed to the knights, but she vaguely felt a fury radiating behind her. “Not without me there.”

“We made a deal that I would speak privately with one of the knights and no one would be harmed,” Lari explained. “The Ewoks have two of their comrades. They don’t want to break this promise.”

Dash’s focus shifted behind her again. His eyes looked like they could kill, the night’s darkness and sporadic light of the torches making them flash dangerously. “What do they want?”

“I don’t know…” Lari trailed off. She knew what the three subordinate knights wanted. What Kylo Ren wanted was another question entirely.

There was conflict on Dash’s face.

“I don’t like it…” he began. A silence hung in the air. He looked at her hesitantly. “What do you think?”

Lari swallowed. What did she think? She thought she was afraid, afraid of dying and leaving her people. Afraid of leaving Dash and his fierce loyalty. She hadn’t even kissed him. She hadn’t ever told him she loved him, not in that way. Why had she never said it?

She thought this was a test. She would have to face four knights of darkness who wanted her dead after they were done with her. It was a test to see what her powers were, whether she wanted to live badly enough, whether she was meant for this world that had always rejected her.

“I think we have to try,” she said finally. It was vague but Dash knew what she meant. Play along for as long as we can.

Dash nodded once and stood.

He leapt to the ground gracefully, and his fellow warriors followed suit.

“We’ll walk you to the Ewok village,” Dash said loudly before the knights, walking past them boldly.

Lari was relieved to see the two knights deactivate their sabers. But she could tell from their stiffness that neither seemed interested in having more distractions involved in their plan.

Without turning Kylo Ren spoke, his modulated voice low like a feline purr and an engine groaning to life. “We don’t need escorts.”

Lari looked at the knight whose life she’d saved just earlier that morning. Looked at the helmet with steady, leveling eyes. If he made this difficult, Lari could make things difficult, too.

She couldn’t tell if he was looking at her. But when she felt through the force tentatively, she could feel him glaring at her right back.

Dash took a torch from someone and approached the Jedi Killer, who in the darkness of the forest looked like a harbinger of death.

The conjured image wasn’t that far off the mark.

Dash suddenly had his face, and his torch, in the Jedi Killer’s.

“You may think you’re still in your safe Empire cocoon, murderer.” Dash licked his lips. “But out here—” he brought the flame before the knight’s helmet, and it danced in the black sheen of his viser. “—out here, you’re just another human with a beating heart.” Dash smiled, as if he and the knight were sharing a joke. “We’ll play along with your game, but don’t think for a second we’re not ready.”

Lari watched, fearful and immobile. The deal she’d struck with the knights was suddenly precarious. Would they change their mind, lash out in anger? Would they kill her people, taking her by force and killing her after they had what they needed?

 _No_. She squared her jaw. _She would not let them._

Lari had never felt so determined to delve into the dark unknown of her powers, if it came to that.

Without caring to gauge the response of the knights, she stepped forward to put a hand on Dash’s arm, the one that held the torch.

She spoke softly. “Let’s go.”

Dash eyed her peripherally. Then, so suddenly and violently, he withdrew the torch from the Jedi Killer’s vision and stepped away, toward the end of the clearing.

Lari thought she saw the knights exchange a glance, but fortunately neither one said anything. Lari supposed they were playing along, too.

Seeing Dash so dangerous was nothing new to Lari. He had looked that deadly growing up whenever the bounty hunters had tried to capture Lari, when he learned the orphanage on Hosnian was being shut down, or when she’d told him that their planet was about to be blown to bits by the First Order.

She had met Dash after Skywalker left her on Hosnian Prime. He had spotted her at the docks, where ships came and went loading and unloading goods. It was where his prime targets of pickpocketing congregated.

Lari had looked quite literally like a lost puppy. She clearly was an outsider. And Hosnian was made up of outsiders. But this girl looked like an outsider to the entire _galaxy_. As if she’d never seen so many people before in her life.

Turned out he was right.

An orphan himself, he knew what it was like to be abandoned. He took her under his wing and brought her to the orphanage where he still ate and slept, though he was almost fifteen. The orphanage was where orphaned kids went to live until they were grown and able to fend for themselves, because no one sold them the bullshit about their forever parents coming to pick them up. The orphanage was charity, and Dash was paying them back through his services.

Lari had been struck by him instantly. Not only was Dash warm and welcoming, he lived life so fast it fascinated her. He was always on the edge of everything. But he lived with simple, earnest conviction. If Lari thought his pickpocketing was wrong, it was this conviction that swayed her.

“The odds are against us. I’m just trying to even things out,” he said as they stood between two buildings on the dock. He pointed, showing Lari the type of people to look for. “Them, they probably never had to work for anything a day in their life.”

Lari understood. The wealthy coming in and out of the docks, with their lush clothing, their assistants following them around waiting on their hand and foot—they had not been orphans. At least, not the ones she’d seen at Dash’s orphanage. Living in rags, no fat on their bones, with no certain future.

And Lari realized she had never worked a day in her life, either.

She hadn’t meant to tell him about what she was, about her power.

They were at the docks like every other day since Dash had taken her under his wing. There was a well-dressed man whose purpose in Hosnian, she learned accidentally, was finding girls to bring to a brothel somewhere off-world. It was a profitable business, and he couldn’t stop thinking about the wealth it brought in. He was projecting so loudly, so disgustingly, that Lari had to tell Dash.

Dash was dumbfounded.

“You can _read minds_?”

She blushed and had to tell him over and over that she didn’t look in his (and she didn’t need to— he told her everything).

But Dash didn’t make her feel like a monster. He knew she was Lari.

Just Lari.

They grew up together, adolescents into young adults. They continued to work for and help the orphanage in exchange for food and housing. With Lari’s ability to hear thoughts, and Dash’s skill at the slight of the hand, they made quite the thieving pair.

Lari continued to write Nuni on Felucia. She missed her. She wished Nuni would come to Hosnian and live with her and Dash in the orphanage. She could imagine her baking all day for the children. They would love her bread, and she would love the praise.

But no, she said. Always no. But how she looked forward to Lari visiting soon.

It made her heart ache.

As they grew older, the work got harder. The Republic economy was struggling as more and more people grew afraid to part with their money. Less and less wealthy were arriving to be pickpocketed. Lari’s compensation for teaching the orphans reading and writing, a position she acquired once she reached eighteen, dwindled to nothing. Funding for the orphanage was being cut completely by the state.

A cloud settled over every Hosnian’s countenance. Furious discussions of the First Order were tucked in every corner of the city, lingering in the minds of all creatures. Some anticipating it, most dreading it.

Nuni had stopped answering her letters.

It was by chance that her and Dash had learned of their impending doom.

She had heard a covert First Order spy projecting it at the docks.

 _Starkiller_.

They brought all the orphans to the dock and bribed a freighter to take them as far as Endor and drop them off there. It had been Lari’s idea. Lari had read about the climate, the Ewok demeanor—welcoming and loyal—and it wasn’t too far off from the freighter’s ultimate destination. She was confident the planet wouldn’t be targeted. Endor was considered a planet of the past, a forgotten place overridden by Ewoks and the trash from old battles.

Its destruction wouldn’t _impress_.

Lari had struggled with the knowledge. She wanted to tell everyone of Hosnian, wanted to save everyone. But Dash had reasoned with her. She couldn’t possibly save _everyone_.

And they had no time. No time to do anything but save themselves.

They made a home on Endor. To Lari’s amazement and pleasure, their camp became a covert rehabilitation camp during the war. Wounded Republic soldiers had heard tales of Lari’s gift of healing. Broken families and wanderers came for asylum. Over the course of the war years Endor grew to a small haven for those affected by the First Order.

But when the Republic finally surrendered, the atmosphere of Endor shifted. Lari felt it minutely.

Once a place for hope, it became a place of paranoia, of waiting for the end. Lari continued to teach the children, to nurse the wounded and sick.

But she, too, waited.

 

***

 

They trekked through the forest to the Ewok village, with Dash in front, followed by the knights and the rest of the soldiers. Lari brought up the rear with a female warrior from the village.

The forest was dark and brooding. What had once seemed like a home now felt invaded and treacherous. Lari kept an eye trained on the front, making sure nothing escalated between Dash and the knights.

They looked like two dark apparitions from another world.

“So they _don’t_ want to kill us?” asked Mona lowly. Mona was holding a torch in one hand and the other rested on the blaster on her hip. She was a little younger than Lari, but fierce like Dash.

“Not necessarily,” said Lari slowly. “We made a deal. They just want some piece of information.”

“Hmph,” said Mona. “We should just kill them right now and be done with it.”

“Don’t you think the First Order would wonder where their best knights went?” Lari said lowly, brushing a branch from her path. “Where _Kylo Ren_ went? Snoke knows they’re here.” Lari suppressed a shiver. “They would slaughter us all.”

Mona thought for a moment. “Well we’d leave before then,” she resolved.

Lari shook her head. Certainly they’d have to move after this ordeal was over anyway. But where to was another matter. It was hard to know which planets were still “free,” so to speak, and which ones were fast becoming colonies of the First Order Empire. Communication between other “free” planets was shoddy at best. And their camp refrained from contacting other planets without knowing for certain who was there.

“We don’t even know where’d we go,” sighed Lari. “And we can’t exactly kill time in space with the empire’s checkpoints everywhere.”

They couldn’t leave if they wanted too, either. The ship they’d been working on was far from done.

It frightened Lari to think of leaving Endor. She’d heard stories of other planets. Stories of stormtroopers torturing civilians, of First Order officials enslaving people to mine their planet’s resources, literally working them to death. Selling girls and women into the galactic sex trade.

The galaxy was transforming, and Lari was in denial.

Mona looked at Lari with a quiet intensity. “You could protect us from anything, Lari.”

Lari didn’t say anything more.

She didn’t want to make promises she couldn’t keep.

 

***

 

Before long they reached the Ewok village.

Dash spoke to two guards standing at the threshold of a bridge to the tree village. Lari saw the Ewoks nod and stand to the side, allowing them entrance.

Torches were lit throughout the complex tree village. Multiple levels of tree homes were connected by ladders, bridges, and branches. Lari had been here only a few times, but the network of their tree village never ceased to impress her.

As Lari approached the wooden bridge she spoke with the guards in Ewokese.

“Dash explained the situation?” she asked.

“Yes. You are lucky we didn’t start to roast them,” answered one.

Lari knew the Ewoks felt the severity of the situation. They too were afraid of being exterminated by the First Order Empire, who considered them pests at best and rabid beasts at worst.

It felt like they were all trying to outrun something already waiting for them at the end.

They walked until it they were on a large wooden platform at the center of the village, suspended high above the forest, flanked on all sides by thick tall trees. Lari could only guess how many years those trees had been rooted there. How many lives they’d seen come and go.

Almost immediately the Jedi Killer approached his knights, who were tight to wooden poles and being guarded by an Ewok.

“Untie them,” said Kylo to an Ewok. It wasn’t a request, Lari realized. It was mind control.

Dash pressed his blaster to the knight’s side.“They aren’t moving until you’ve had your _chat_ with Lari,” said Dash.

Dash went from standing next to the night to suddenly flying back through the air only to hit a surrounding tree and collapse on the far side of the wooden platform.

“Dash!” Lari yelled. Nearby Ewoks huddled around him.

Her warriors encroached on Kylo Ren; his fellow knight moved to stand beside him, sabers ignited. The two sides stood there, weapons at the ready.

“Someone wants death to come early,” said Mona.

“We couldn’t deny someone the pleasure,” spoke the knight beside Jedi Killer, his modulated voice higher but almost more unsettling because of it.

Lari would not stand for it.

She stepped between the two factions, aware of her power. She moved like the epicenter of an oceanic storm that knows how far-reaching its destruction can be.

“Enough,” said Lari. She felt a dark energy flowing in her veins, making her feel heady. She narrowed her eyes at the Jedi Killer’s helmet, behind which he glared with disdain. She was surprised she could sense it.

She spoke to the Jedi Killer. “You didn’t come all the way here to risk losing this unmentionable information that I somehow possess.”

She heard a scoff behind the mask, violent and mechanical. “I’d have no problem taking from you that which I seek.”

Lari took a step closer to the Jedi Killer—to Kylo Ren—stepped near his hot saber which hung low but at the ready. She felt it warm her hip.

“If that were the case,” she said. “You would have done so. But you know what I am. You know that I was made to kill. You know that I could defeat you and your knights. ”

“If that were the case,” said Kylo Ren, leaning in for good measure. “You would have done so.”

Lari was never one to act impulsively out of feeling, but she suddenly wanted to throw a rock at that impenetrable helmet of his.

They were at an impasse. They stood there unmoving, her and her warriors versus Kylo Ren and his knights, for a whole beat of a moment.

Then the sound of something screeching in the night assaulted their ears and broke the trance.

Through the forest trees the sky, barely lit by a sun igniting the horizon orange, was harboring a distant herd of dragons suspended in the air. It almost looked as if they weren’t moving, but they were. They were drawing slowly toward the Ewok village.

“They are looking for a feast,” said one of the Ewok elders in Ewokese, suddenly beside Lari and looking at the sky with narrow eyes.

As if answering an unasked question, the Jedi Killer turned his helmet slightly to the side toward his knights. “They want to eat us.”

Suddenly the Ewoks were running and swinging across the tree village in preparation for battle. It was chaos all around them.

Lari had only heard of these creatures. Because her and her people lived low on the forest floor, these dragons weren’t a threat.

There must have been thirty of them, massive creatures who steadily drew nearer by the second. The masked knights stood unmoving, as if calm and serene in the face of the herd of dragons. If she felt the Jedi Killer’s glare behind the mask a moment ago, now she felt nothing from him.

The Knights of Ren were waiting for a command from their master. And their master, Lari supposed, was waiting for her to give in.

Suddenly Mona stepped forward.

“This is fun and all, but can we continue this _after_ we’ve slayed the dragon herd?”

No one had the chance to respond for a distant stream of fire unfurled in the air and, amazingly, singed the trees just beyond the main Ewok village.

Lari was always one to understand the natural world, to defend it from careless destruction and cruel domination from humans and other species. But she knew a predator when she saw one. Those dragons were not in a hurry. They knew their food was waiting for them.

The question was, would try to catch them alive or burn them to a crisp first.

Everyone seemed to have the same question in their minds, for the moment between the knights and her people her did not last. The knights save for the Jedi Killer were the first to ignite their sabers and step away from her people, trained on the night sky. They did so simultaneously, as if by command.

Her people scattered, taking higher ground or more advantageous positions of defense.

Lari stayed put. She was going to draw a shield from the life forces of the trees around her. While she wasn’t sure it could handle thirty or so hungry dragons, she knew it would help immensely.

She put her hand on the nearest tree, one that shot up from the large platform to carry higher ones. She closed her eyes, drawing on the life force beneath her palm.

Her other hand’s wrist was imprisoned and yanked suddenly, and she lost contact with the tree and stumbled. The Jedi Killer held her wrist with his gloved hand. His massive frame was imposing and unyielding.

“You’re coming with me.”

Lari looked at the Jedi Killer, stunned and positively repulsed. Immediately she attempted to yank her hand out of the murderer’s grasp, but he was already striding away from the scene and dragging her in an iron grip, the gloved hand pinching her skin.

She sputtered. “The dragons—“

“—will be slayed by my knights,” he said smoothy in that cold modulated voice. It wasn’t a comfort; if they slaughtered the dragons, her people were certainly next.

She would have blasted him away from her, but the flow of emotions she felt from him on contact was stunning. It almost humanized him.

Almost.

One of Lari’s many gifts was feeling the needs and emotions of living things upon contact.

She felt him acutely.

Determination. Irritation. And something else.

He was anxious.

They walked toward the side of the village that was flanked by mountain rock. They crossed a long roped bridge to a flat clearing on the side of a mountain. From this position they could see the dragons and the village. Lari was comforted in knowing the Ewoks have warded off these herds before. And her people would help them. Hopefully the knights would, too.

Having released her wrist the knight turned to face Lari.

“What do you know about General Organa.”

Lari frowned. Was this a trick question? “She was a leader of the Resistance,” she answered tentatively.

“Why is her force signature on you?”

She wished that helmet was off so she could see what he was feeling. She couldn’t sense him.

She had vaguely thought this conversation was going to deal with her being a weapon, somehow. That’s all she had ever been sought for. To be used, to be captured and manipulated. To be destroyed.

Why he was asking her about General Organa—a name she’d only heard in passing by other refugees on Endor— was perplexing. And why it was so secretive in the first place, she couldn’t begin to guess.

“I was never in the Resistance,” said Lari. “I…I never knew her.”

“Don’t lie to me!”

Suddenly Lari’s throat was being squeezed by invisible hands. Couldn’t breath. She sputtered and thrashed until she called on her deep being to release a sharp force blast.

The Jedi Killer fell back, stung. He leaned against the rock from the mountain, touching his arms as if he’d been burnt.

Lari watched him clench his fists and push himself back up to a standing position. She leveled her gaze, waiting for any sudden movements.

“I sense her on you,” he said, breathing hard through his mask. “If I kill you, then perhaps all will be finished.”

She was impatient with this. All of this drama, all this secrecy, and she didn’t understand any of it. In the background the sound of battle against the dragons waged, her people in danger, and she was here humoring some unknown motivation that somehow involved her.

She used the element of surprise to push into his mind. She flew past his defenses easily.

She searched his mind for what plagued him, and the images came fully enough. A woman, with large eyes and brown hair. The life dying from her shocked eyes. Her face lighting up with a laugh. The two images were in stark contrast to one another.

Lari left as soon as soon as she came. She was breathing hard.

“Her…” began Lari. “She’s…?” Lari swallowed.

The knight remained silent.

“No one told me who she was…she came to Endor barely clinging to life. And I…I healed her.”

“She’s alive?” demanded the knight.

“Yes…no…I don’t know.”

_“I’ve destroyed my son.”_

_Lari placed a warm cloth on the woman’s forehead. Her wound wasn’t just bodily, it was a force wound— an injury of the soul._

_Lari mainly had to treat physical wounds. Force wounds were rare and difficult. There was no sure cure for them. Inflicted by force users, force wounds ate away at the life force of the victim. Depending on the severity of the force wound, this death could either be quick and painful or slow and agonizing. Only those skilled in force healing could attempt to combat force wounds._

_This particular woman’s force wound was deep and unclean, she could feel it. She wondered who had caused it._

_Lari spoke gently. “How could a mother’s love do anything but good?”_

_Despite her pain, the woman let out a surprisingly strong laugh that made Lari jump._

_“If you met him you’d know.”_

Lari returned to the moment. The knight stood before her, unmoving. She had the sense that he witnessed her memory.

“You’re her son,” said Lari lamely.

He said nothing. She stared at the black empty helmet where his face should have been and wanted to know what he was thinking, why he said nothing, why he waited for her to act.

Eventually he spoke. “No more than you are the daughter of your birth parents.”

It was a statement, she found, that wasn’t vicious or cruel. It was matter-of-fact.

In some strange way she found she understood.

Her parents had given her to the First Order. Whether they had wanted to or not, she wasn’t sure. Either way she did not consider herself as having parents. It was a gaping hole in her life that not even Nuni or Dash or the orphans or her people on Endor had been able to fill.

She felt more affinity for the unknown person who had stolen her away from the First Order’s testing.

Lari was unsettled by the lack of anger from the Jedi Killer. She had gone rifling through his memories unasked, yet he said nothing.

But from his stance, she could see he wanted her to continue. His silence was yielding. Acquiescent—if only for the moment.

“I don’t know whether she lived or died…” began Lari, speaking truthfully. “Many people were coming and going during the war...”

Lari hesitated. Almost instinctually she looked up at the night sky to a galaxy that held so many stars and planets. As a young girl on Felucia it had been a place for dreams. During the war it became a place of hostility and danger.

But now it was a place of hope.

That woman, the mother of the Resistance—and incidentally of Kylo Ren—was out there.

And not only that—Lari could feel her. Had felt her since the end of the war—calling our to her.

Lari had assumed it was trauma. She would wake up in the middle of the night panting and sweating from a dream she couldn’t remember and hearing her own name echoing in her ears.

It took several weeks of waking to her name to realize whose voice it was.

_“If you met him you’d know.”_

The woman with the deep force wound.

The day the woman disappeared was unremarkable. Lari had walked into the refugee tent to find her cot empty.

It was nothing uncommon. She had died in her sleep. Or she had recovered enough for her liking and had boarded a ship to some other planet at dawn. Both were possibilities and real occurrences that could have and did happened.

But after a handful of painful deaths, Lari had stopped asking the person on night duty if her patient had survived the night.

She didn’t ask about the woman with the force wound.

But now…now she knew the woman was the great General Organa.

And she was calling to her through the force.

She felt the Jedi Killer press against her mind, but she pushed him out.

“There is more,” he said snarled impatiently and stepping close. “You are hiding something from me.”

Lari froze.

_Her son…_

She was always bad liar.

She diverted instead.

“If you sense her on me, it must be because I tried to heal her force wound...”

“Force wound,” he said dully.

Lari nodded dumbly. “Yes.”

They stood, staring at one another. Then the Jedi Killer’s arms went up to his helmet and he pressed a button.

His face was suddenly in view.

He would have been handsome if he hadn’t been so cold, so dead inside.

It was true. If he was fully cloaked in the dark side, he was also completely void of feeling. Even now, with this mission to find General Organa, Lari sensed a distinct lack of passion. He acted mechanically, as if the very stars above moved him like a pawn on the galactic board of chess.

Perhaps the analogy was closer than she imagined.

He looked at her almost with a deference and she instinctually recoiled.

An act, surely. One he probably put on before that monster Snoke.

He spoke with stilled, seemingly unguarded eyes. “What do you want in exchange for the whole truth?”

She looked at him as if he were mad.

But her own desperate desires betrayed her poker face.

“I want a promise that my people and the Ewoks will remain untouched by the First Order Empire.”

The Jedi Killer laughed. It was loud and the humanness of it startled her.

“It would be easier to have no attachments at all.” He said, looking at her almost with pity. “The First Order Empire cannot be stopped. Not by me, nor you, nor anyone else.”

“Then I can’t be persuaded,” Lari said, raising her chin.

His lips twitched into a smile. “Oh you will.”

“Lari!”

They both looked to the bridge, where Dash was jogging toward them.

Just watching him made Lari's heart flutter.

He arrived to the mountain clearing and looked at Lari, panting. There must have been something on her face, for he looked at the Jedi Killer accusingly and stepped toward him menacingly.

“What did you do to her?”

The Jedi Killer looked as if Dash was the dullest person in the entire universe.

And so quickly the Jedi Killer's saber was out and resting by his neck. Dash didn't move, frozen by the knight’s immobilizing powers.

“Do you want him to live?” the Jedi Killer said without turning to Lari. There was no emotion in his voice.

Lari couldn’t move.

Couldn’t _breath_.

“Yes,” she said, breathlessly.

“Then tell me,” said the Jedi Killer.

“Tell him what, Lari,” said Dash, looking confused and not the least worried about his precarious life.

If she tried anything, Dash would invariably get hurt. The blade was already warming his skin an angry red. She probably had a fifty-fifty chance, a chance too even to risk anything.

To risk Dash.

_Her Dash._

“I feel her,” she said.

Lari felt like the world around her had grown so foreign.

What life was she living?

A memory: her as a girl, watching the dark clouds of a storm unfurl and open toward her. She, unable to move. Hypnotized. Wanting the storm to drench her completely, to electrify her soul.

Lari licked her lips.

“I think she's alive.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're a reader, feel free to drop me a line! Would love to know what you think :)
> 
> ♥︎♥︎♥︎


	4. Chapter Four

It was quiet. The three of them stood, unmoving. The urgent shots of blasters and agitated roars of the dragons had dissipated entirely. A hollow silence hung in the beautiful night.

“Of course she is,” said Kylo Ren, straightening. He deactivated his saber as if it was the next logical step. He felt the inevitability of the situation cloak him, a weighty feeling of irony.

How it was possible, he did not know.

His saber…through her _fucking chest_.

That woman would haunt him until the day he died.

But he had had a feeling, hadn’t he? That’s why he was here on Endor, instead of Starkiller, making plans with his master, the Supreme Leader, on how to use the dark side to bring the galaxy to a new order.

Replacing his helmet to his head, he turned and stalked toward the edge of the cliff, where the dark forest extended to the night’s horizon.

How was it possible? Perhaps because he had left too quickly—knowing the deed was done and that he was standing in the center of a literal ticking time bomb—he hadn’t been able to relish the moment. Or at the very least, make sure she was dead.

 _Imbecile_.

He didn’t know who said it—him, or his master.

He had left the general’s room as quick as he’d come. But he had spared one last look at her.

She had been on the ground— lifeless, a pathetic hand over her chest, over the charred hole in her flesh. Her eyes were closed, a pained expression on her features that suited his tastes.

Whoever had saved her must have been hiding, waiting from the outside. Waiting for the moment when Kylo Ren left the room.

And she had ended up _here_ , on Endor.

She was always hiding.

Perhaps this was it then, he thought not for the first time. Perhaps this was the reason he felt he were balancing on a precipice. Between two worlds, so to speak. Between past and present, pre-empire and post-empire. A liminal space that made him feel numb, a stranger in his own body.

 _Of course_. He couldn’t concentrate on the new empire when his…the stupid _general_ haunted him. He couldn’t bring himself into the New Empire when that silly woman was _somewhere_ —still giving pathetic creatures around her a fatalistic hope.

He would eliminate her.

Passion was unnecessary. It was a correction to an oversight. She was nothing but a roach in the New Order. No one could hide her anymore. Not the Republic, not the Resistance, not Solo.

No one.

After her elimination, he would continue his reign as the Master of the Knights of Ren. A leader of a new generation of dark-siders. Master planner of the dark forces of the New Empire.

Kylo Ren had been vaguely aware that the two refugees were talking in low, hushed voices. When he turned he saw the boy’s hand on the weapon’s arm in a gesture of comfort and intimacy.

For once he didn’t feel he was drowning in the girl’s emotions. For whatever reason she was dutifully keeping her feelings out of the force.

When the boy saw that Kylo’s attention was turned back toward them, he stepped toward him suddenly.

“You have what you want,” he said, an ugly look on his face. “You made the deal. It’s now time for you to leave with your men.”

“Yes,” Kylo Ren agreed. “We made a deal.”

Kylo turned his head to the weapon.

“In exchange for your life, you will lead me to the general.”

The girl’s mouth opened slightly. Kylo Ren’s eyes were trained on the shape for a millisecond.

“She’s not going anywhere,” the boy said, predictably.

The girl kept looking at him. He almost felt her press against his mind, but it was a gentle brush. Kylo narrowed his eyes.

“Lari,” the boy began, sensing a shift in the moment.

“Dash,” she said, finally looking away from Kylo and releasing him from her curious gaze. “I have to.”

“What?” The boy looked struck. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“We’ll talk later,” the girl said lowly. She looked to Kylo, a firm gaze and a posture of resolution. “I will help you, so long as our original deal still stands.”

Kylo Ren released what could have been the minutest of shrugs. He figured that the New Empire cared very little about the pathetic creatures on Endor. But if they colonized Endor for their resources or to enslave the creatures, it was not something Kylo had control over anyway.

The only reason he agreed to the deal was so she would come quietly. He could be coercive and violent, but so could she.

All he wanted was this weapon…this _girl_ to lead him to the general. It was his only objective. So if that deal was the asking price, he didn’t want any more distraction or fuss about it.

The boy seemed to give up on the girl and looked to Kylo. “You can’t find her on your own? Don’t you have the _dark side_ to do that?”

The sarcasm wasn’t lost on Kylo Ren.

Kylo responded dully. “Such childish things coming from the mouth of a grown man.”

That gave a nice rise out of him, but the weapon interrupted before Kylo had the satisfaction of hearing him flounder.

“Dash.” The weapon drew close to the boy, her voice and her gaze appeared to have staying power. The gesture communicated a discussion that needed to take place without him.

Kylo was perfectly fine with that.

“Tomorrow at dawn,” was all he said before walking past them toward the wooden bridge to the Ewok village.

His knights wouldn’t like his next move, but he was their master.They would have to understand and acquiesce.

 

***

 

They had built a fire by his knights’ ships. Helmets off, they sat eating their rehydrated proteins, the fire licking the cool night.

His knights took turns briefly speaking about the dragon battle. It hadn’t been difficult to slay the beasts, they’d told Kylo, but there were so many of them that it took some time. Part of the tree village was burned, and a few of the Ewok creatures had been killed, but it was hardly a balanced fight. The refugees had proven surprisingly competent. The Ewoks were even more humorously savage than the rumors.

Kylo listened distractedly.

Their situation on Endor was like living in a parallel universe. In the dawn of the New Empire, they were sitting by a fire on Endor eating shitty proteins, recounting a mundane battle that they had fought alongside _refugees_ and _Ewoks_. It was laughable. An absurd juxtaposition to the New Empire’s system of annihilation and domination that was colonizing the planets of the galaxy systematically, one by one.

And it was rare that Kylo Ren and his knights prepared to leave a planet without having violently extracted lives or information.

While it was amusing to think of the peculiarity of the moment, its peculiarity wasn’t that far off from Kylo’s mental state ever since the war ended.

Without waiting any longer, Kylo finally breached the subject he’d been mulling over.

“My acquired information,” he began, “Is that General Organa is alive and in hiding.”

His knights staid their movements.

Kylo continued. “I wish to seek her out and destroy her once and for all. The weapon here on Endor healed her force wound and thus can sense her better than I.” He paused. “I intend to take her and use her as my guide.”

The fire crackled in an arrhythmically. The silence of the night unsettled. Like the whole forest was listening to the conversation. As if the general was off laughing somewhere at Kylo Ren’s expense.

“You said you killed her,” said Ander. Like an accusation.

“I put my saber through her heart,” said Kylo as neutrally as possible. “But it would seem that she was revived at the last moment.”

Kylo Ren was unconcerned about their opinion on this matter. He only confided this information at this time to secure one of their ships, seeing as his was a pile of broken machinery behind that girl’s hut.

But borrowing a ship wasn’t the issue.

“Are you certain you need this weapon?” asked Ridj, tentative.

“She senses the general from Endor,” said Kylo. “I cannot.”

“Master Ren,” said Ander. “If she is a First Order weapon then her complicity to travel with you, alone, could very well lead to your death. Or at the very least serious injury. We could certainly take her, together. But alone…she would be powerful.”

“I have seen her mind and have been in a possibly lethal situation with her before,” said Kylo. The image came to him, unwarranted: Her face above him, eyes closed, an expression that was resolute but yielding. Concerned, but curiously unconcerned. The image was connected to a sensation: the tingling warmth of the healing, and relief—relief that comes with being delivered from pain.

Kylo pushed the thought out of his head.

“She does not want to kill,” he said. “And I’d sense it before she had the chance. She is over expressive through the force. To a fault.”

Ridj turned to their silent companion. “Lex?”

Lex looked like he hadn’t heard him speak. A moment passed, but Lex finally spoke.

“She is the last remaining weapon from that early experiment of the First Order” he said. He raised a hand and played with the licks of the flame with the force. “They killed them all, once they realized they had created… _unreasonable_ creatures.”

Kylo Ren knew very little about the early First Order experiments. Since its inception the First Order had always been scientifically engineering new technologies of power to wield, whether it be a superweapon or a modified human body. Truthfully, he’d been too absorbed in his training and the dark side to be interested.

But now he found himself listening intently.

Lex went on. “Of course, that took years of controlled experiments and adjusting techniques to cultivate bloodlust to realize that the bloodlust was not…innate, as they’d hoped. Not until their adolescence that the scientists finally resigned to the truth. That they would never obey. They had too much… _agency_.”

Kylo thought of the girl. The willfulness in her eyes, the steady current of her resolve in the force.

“The mistake,” said Lex, “was that they had used crystals made dark, assuming that they would turn the humans into dark side weapons. But having a darkened crystal in the bloodstream does not make someone a bloodthirsty killer.”

“But this particular weapon,” he said, “Had disappeared long before the elimination of the weapons. She was smuggled out as a baby by a laboratory worker, who was later executed.” Lex finally looked away from the fire. “The First Order has been more or less hunting for her ever since.”

The slight blue of the flames suddenly rose, threatening to eat all the orange. Kylo watched Lex do this, and wondered what his motives were. How did he know this much?

“I sense that her powers run so deep that even she might not know what she possesses, what she is capable of,” said Lex. “And that is all the more…unsettling.”

He looked at Kylo. “I suggest that you kill her as soon as you’ve found the general. The Supreme Leader ordered it. She is too much of a variable for the New Empire to be left alive.”

Ander spoke up. “If you want her for your purposes, that’s fine. But we request you take full responsibility, should anything happen because of her.”

“We don’t want you to put yourself in a deadly situation…” said Ridj. He was always loyal to Kylo. “But we respect your decision.”

Kylo Ren said nothing.

They knew it meant he had made his decision.

 

***

 

The next morning was pale and dewy. Kylo had slept more deeply than he had a long time, and awoke with the absence of any unwanted force signatures on his brain.

He was alone with himself. His breath came before him in the air, thin grey tendrils of life.

Slowly he sat up and realized he was alone. There was no trace of his knights anywhere, save for the one pod ship they had left him.

Goodbyes weren’t something they readily exchanged, but it was unusual for them to leave without waking him.

Once fully dressed, Kylo began to move supplies from his crashed ship into the pod.

He had never journeyed somewhere without a certain destination, and he hated the thought that came, but it was there before he had time to block it. He’d only ever entertained one other journey in which he did not know the destination. When Skywalker had taken him to discover a disturbance in the force. A disturbance that ended up being on Felucia.

When he was almost done packing the pod with the few supplies from the camp, the girl emerged from the trees.

Kylo had an unusual—very _rare_ feeling. One he hadn’t felt in a long time.

He was suddenly hyperaware that he would have to converse with this person.

He wished she were a droid that he could order to never talk.

He was glad his helmet was on.

But she was peculiar, he thought as she walked toward him in her patchwork pants and her wrapped rag-shirt. Hux liked to characterize the refugees as base and vile. Certainly they weren’t the cleanliest. And it was idiotic and futile to resist the New Empire—wishful thinking to believe that escape was possible, that resistance could reverse the empire’s course. But— he begrudgingly admitted—they at least had dignity.

He had seen enough debased people begging for their miserable lives to know the difference.

When she approached him she stopped just short of him. Too close. He felt his height keenly next to her. But he also felt her strength hum in the force.

Peculiar, indeed, that someone should be incapable of fulfilling their destiny for destruction.

Why the Supreme Leader was concerned about this botched experiment was beyond him.

She placed her hand on the pod. “This is our ship?”

He didn’t like that.

“This is the temporary pod we will use until we reach the nearest empire base,” he said smoothly. “At that point we will upgrade to a long distance ship with hyperspace capabilities if it comes to that.” He paused. The business-like chatter was unnerving— for it came naturally. He cleared his throat. “Do you know how to fly?”

The weapon shook her head. Kylo knew she wasn’t lying. Probably because she wore every emotion on her face, or because it invariably spilled into the force. He wouldn’t have to worry about a hijacking attempt, at least.

“Are you always going to wear that?”

Kylo stared. “What?”

“That helmet,” said the weapon, pointing to his head.

Kylo couldn’t help the smile that formed on his lips.

“Does it frighten you?”

“No,” she said, her face blank. Then she turned back to the ship, peering into it.

“Why then?” For someone so irritatingly expressive, he couldn’t read her suddenly.

She turned back to him, an honest look on her face.

“It’s quite ugly.”

Kylo scoffed. But he didn’t know what to say to that. It was an unusual complaint. Perhaps he would tell her how he’d been in the minds of peoples, and seen his own masked face in their nightmares.

“She’s in the Unknown Regions,” she said suddenly.

Kylo Ren looked at her. Eyes narrowed.

“How can you sense it?”

“Her signature feels…unmapped. Out of reach.”

Again, the girl that could be so expressive was suddenly unreadable.

It was infuriating.

He stepped one step closer and looked down at her.

“Do you understand that any time you attempt to disobey me and Endor will be blown to dust?”

Her eyes narrowed. “That wasn’t a part of the deal before.”

“I’ve lost track of our deals,” Kylo said flippantly, and not entirely facetious.

“And then I’m to be eliminated?”

Her words grated a nerve.

Was she trying to get a rise out of him? He wouldn’t tolerate having to explain her own mortality to her the entire trip, over and over again, like some child. He was almost regretting his decision to use her. Could he have found the general on his own?

Doubtful.

“What the New Empire does is no concern to me, nor is it in my control,” he said, stalking to the ship. He slid forward the pilot seat and gestured for her to get in behind it.

He felt it before he saw it on her face.

Apprehension. Like she wanted to turn around and run in the other direction.

Finally, a recognizable emotion.

If he felt the swell of her feelings before, he felt nothing now. In front of the open door, she paused to look at him.

Her voice was clear, like spring water. “My name is Lari.”

Kylo Ren narrowed his eyes. Of course he knew the girl’s name. That boy was saying it every second.

Why she wanted to announce it he didn’t know, but it probably wasn’t innocent.

“And you are?” she asked, surprisingly forceful.

Kylo licked his lips.

“Kylo Ren.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To all four of my readers out there (lol) sorry this is shorter than normal. Grad school is starting to ramp up. It may take me a bit longer to update. But this story is always in my head :)
> 
> Some exciting things to come.
> 
> ♥️♥️♥️


End file.
